In the United States, cardiovascular disease (including, e.g., heart disease and stroke), cancer, and diabetes are among the leading causes of death. Based on available data for 2006, it is estimated that nearly one million Americans die of cardiovascular disease each year, which is about 40% of all deaths. One out of every four Americans has cardiovascular disease. Heart disease and stroke account for almost 6 million hospitalizations each year and cause disability for almost 10 million Americans age 65 years and older. Meanwhile, it is estimated that a total of 23.6 million children and adults in the United States (7.8% of the population) have diabetes according to the available data for 2007. Among these, 17.9 million were diagnosed with diabetes, 5.7 million people were undiagnosed. In addition, 57 million people are pre-diabetes, and 1.6 million new cases of diabetes are diagnosed in people aged 20 years and older each year. Among people age 20 years or older, 23.5 million (or 10.7% of all people in this age group) have diabetes. People with diabetes are also at significantly increased risk of cardiovascular diseases.
Although these diseases remain difficult to completely prevent or treat, early detection and proper medical intervention are important to reduce the risk of the diseases, slow the progression of the diseases, alleviate the suffering of patients, and improve quality of life.
Regarding these and other diseases, the currently available healthcare systems are facing multitude of challenges. One of the challenges concerns healthcare quality. The failure to detect, diagnose or treat heart diseases is still one of the leading reasons for heart failure. Further, the failure to identify preferred therapy can result in a lapse of optimal healthcare. Although a variety of guidelines are available from different professional associations, there is no unified approach to capture the benefits of these independent sources.
Another challenge for the current healthcare systems arises from ineffective communication across the various practices or healthcare providers involved in the diagnosis, treatment, and/or prevention of a particular disease. This inability to effectively and efficiently communicate between practices and healthcare providers is further exacerbated when attempting to address two or more diseases correlated by co-morbidity. Individual care is delivered in numerous different locations by individuals and organizations that are often unrelated. Therefore, critical patient data may be dispersed in many different locations and often in incompatible formats, and can be difficult to obtain on the point of care. This fragmentation of patient information accounts for many of the inefficiencies and lapses in patient care, which can lead to medical mistakes and excess costs.
Yet another challenge for the healthcare system is the escalating costs. Expenditures in the United States on health care surpassed $2.3 trillion in 2008, which is was about $7,681 per resident and accounts for 16.2% of the nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). These expenditures are more than three times the $714 billion spent in 1990, and over eight times the $253 billion spent in 1980. Stemming this growth has become a major policy priority, as the government, employers, and consumers increasingly struggle to keep up with healthcare costs.
There is a need for patient healthcare management systems and methods for improving communication and access to relevant information and data to thus improve the overall outcome of patient healthcare, which provide individuals or parties involved in healthcare with information and tools to facilitate the diagnosis and treatment of patients and to improve the quality and cost of patient healthcare.